One month.
It had been a month's misfortune since Ethan woke up in that cursed world, with that disgraced system and powers too complex for his simple mind to be able to use them efficiently.
It had been a fucking month since he started training. And guess what your current fusion rate was?
1.74%
Enough, this shit has to end now.
"System! "
[ Tell me how I can be useful ]
"Stock your shitty chitchat and tell me what I have to do to increase this fucking merger rate as soon as possible! " Ethan didn't even bother to try to be polite, he was already at his limit.
For a whole month, a whole month, he was religiously a training schedule that was clearly inefficient because it was his only option at the moment, only to receive practically no results.
For a month, he kept asking the system for tips and advice to see if he could get slightly better results, only to receive the same useless advice said with different words to make them look less worse than they really were.
For a fucking month he had to worry about keeping a low profile, not drawing anyone's attention, trying not to annoy any of the Hell's Kitchen gangs and having to worry every day about which villain would attack the city that time or what would be the world-destroying catastrophe of the week.
For a month, a fucking bastard month, he did everything the system tried, really tried, tried more than he ever tried in his entire life, keep positive thinking and hoped to reap the best possible results.
But now he was tired. Tired of pretending he was progressing when in fact he didn't evolve into any crap, tired of thinking that the system was trying to help him and not sabotage him, and tired of pretending that he had time to play train instead of actually getting stronger.
Damn, he hadn't even learned to really fly. The most he could do was to stay in the air for a few minutes without falling.
And now, seeing how little he had progressed even with a whole month of effort, he had reached the limit of how much shit he could take.
[ As I said before, but it seems that you didn't listen, to increase your fusion rate you must-
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU FUCKING SHIT SCREEN! " Ethan shouted, unloading all the accumulated anger.
"I tried, I swear I tried to think you were helping me, but I've taken too much of this and I won't tolerate your crap" He said gritting his teeth "So either you tell me what I want now, or you never show up in front of me again"
There was a strange silence after that. For a moment, Ethan thought that the system was finally taking him seriously and would give him the information he needed, the truly valuable information.
But his next answer just made Ethan lose all the little hope he still had.
[ I don't know what you're talking about ]
"... " Ethan was silent, just looking at that message and with a kind of emotion different from anger taking over him.
Sadness mixed with disappointment.
"You know what, fuck you. Fuck you and everything...! " Ethan said almost like a whisper " Never show up in front of me again "
[ As you wish ]
With that, the system screen disappeared and for the first time in a long time, Ethan felt his mind strangely empty. He didn't know what it was like, but it was as if he had taken something heavy that had been in his head for a long time.
Once again Ethan was greeted with silence, Ethan sat on the dirty floor of that abandoned building and for the first time since he arrived in that world, he cried.
Yes, he was crying.
He was crying for many things, but mainly out of frustration, because that whole situation was simply... frustrating.
Ethan was just a teenager. Well, an extremely unlucky teenager, by the way.
He had some friends who liked him, a family that supported him and dreams that even knowing that he would probably never achieve, he and everyone else had the right to dream.
As pessimistic as he was because of his luck and all the things that used to happen to him, in a way, he liked his life and didn't want it to change.
And then suddenly he is taken out of this simple and relatively calm life to end up in a dangerous fictional universe with powers he never asked to have.
Damn, he wasn't even a Marvel fan. He didn't like the movies and much less read the comics. So why him and not another one of those nerds who spent whole nights in forums about these things?
He was just a normal teenager. He never wanted to be there. He never even dreamed or thought of such an unrealistic and absurd possibility.
Even if he wasn't going to admit it, he was happy when he saw the system and won the Enerjak template, even though his initial reaction was a little exaggerated. He really thought for a brief moment that maybe, just maybe he had a chance to defend himself and have a quiet life in that dangerous one.
But all he received were repeated answers and progress that was the same as nothing.
Even so, he tried to stay positive as his mother always said. Try to see the good side of things and maintain a positive attitude. His sessions of training were him trying to see the positive side in the form of his results and trying not to think too much about his feelings.
But there was no positive side. In a month of training he didn't win anything, and he always found himself thinking about his house, his friends and his mother, thinking about how they were and what they would be doing now.
So Ethan was crying because he was in a situation he never asked to be in, in a world he never asked to set foot in and in horrible living conditions.
He had been wearing the same clothes for more than a month, hardly ate or drank, and could hardly have a night that he could sleep peacefully.
So, deep down, Ethan was sad, because once again his bad luck put him in the worst possible situation he could imagine.
What did he do to deserve that? What did he do to deserve such a severe punishment? What did he do to deserve everything bad that has ever happened to him in life? Ethan genuinely didn't know.
It was at times like this that Ethan thought that if there was a God, so he hated Ethan with all the strength he had.
Ethan has never felt so down in his entire life. He had no friends, no house, friends or money, and there was nothing he could do to change that other than simply putting up with it.
It was at times like this that the desire to end everything there took over...
Ethan stayed there for some more time, letting the tears flow silently as he let out a few sobs, until he finally got tired of being sad and decided to focus his energy on something different.
It wasn't time for sentimentality.
There had to be at least something he could do to increase his fusion rate quickly. Something the system hadn't said. Something he didn't know, that was hidden in some corner he could find.
Ethan found himself thinking about everything he knew about the Sonic franchise, everything he knew about the history of the blue hedgehog and his world of anthropomorphic animals.
Doctor Eggman...
Shadow, the hedgehog...
The emeralds of chaos....
... Chaos....
Chaos Control.
The ability that the people who had in their possession the emeralds of chaos used the most.
A form of time and space manipulation that Ethan did not have total impediment, but knew how it worked.
Just have an emerald, shout "Chaos Control" and something happened. At least it was like that in the games.
Ethan could use the chaos of the environment, so he didn't need the emeralds, not at all. He could only use the skill directly without help from external means.
A part of his mind protested against the idea of using this ability, because there would probably be some repercussion for using such a powerful ability, but at that moment Ethan didn't care about anything else.
Then, wiping the few that still flowed from his eyes, he cleared his throat and prepared for what he would do next.
Completely ignoring any kind of worry left in his mind, Ethan shouted:
"CHAOS CONTR- "
The first thing he felt was an immeasurable pain, and then everything went black...
—————————————————————-
Ethan woke up several hours later, not knowing how much time had passed, but seeing that it had darkened and it was still noon when he fainted.
Ethan was a little confused at first, but after remembering what he was doing before, he quickly went to check his merger rate.
What he saw next made his eyes shine:
3.07%
" Hah... hahaha..." Ethan let out a little laugh, something he hadn't done for a long time.
Even though it wasn't much, Ethan was... happy, because that was his greatest progress with the fusion rate so far and also more than he had earned in a month of training.
Of course, he probably wouldn't try to use Chaos Control again for some time, but he was happy that his "experiment" worked.
It's already been 3.07, only 97.93% is missing...